Henri Barbusse quotes

Henri Barbusse was a French novelist, journalist, and political activist, best known for his anti-war novel "Le Feu" ("Under Fire"). His works reflected deep pacifist convictions and strong criticism of war and social injustice. He became a prominent figure in the pacifist and communist movements of his time. Here are 225 of his quotes:

War will be repeated as long as it is not decided by those who die on the battlefield.

Henri Barbusse

Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.

Henri Barbusse

I see too deep and too much.

Henri Barbusse

Two armies at death-grips - that is one great army committing suicide.

Henri Barbusse

Let everything be remade on simple lines. There is only one people, there is only one people!

Henri Barbusse

Once, when she was looking at me distressfully, she murmured, "You - you've no more illusion at all. I pity you!" At that moment, within the space of a flash, she was thinking of me only, and she pities me! She has found something in her grief to give me.

Henri Barbusse

Animals are innocence incarnate. This horse is like an enormous child, and if one wanted to point out life's innocence face to face, one would have to typify, not a little child, but a horse.

Henri Barbusse

We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops - and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions.

Henri Barbusse

Men must not awake," the shining shadow goes on, in dull and hollow tones. "Don't worry!" says the ironical voice, and at that moment it terrifies me. Several bodies arise on their fists into the darkness - I see them by their heavy groans - and look around them. The shadow talks to himself and repeats his insane words: - "Men must not awake." The voice opposite me, capsizing in laughter and swollen with a rattle, says again: - "Don't worry!

Henri Barbusse

They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his two bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My friend, you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say it! "Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it. The act of slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but always ignoble. Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what we've been. But don't talk to me about military virtue because I've killed Germans." "Nor to me," cried another in so loud a voice that no one could have replied to him even had he dared; "nor to me, because I've saved the lives of Frenchmen! Why, we might as well set fire to houses for the sake of the excellence of life-saving!

Henri Barbusse

"You've done well to say all that! Yes, it is always easy to lie for a moment. You might have lied, but it would have been worse when we woke up from the lies. It's a reward to talk. Perhaps it's the only reward there is." She said that profoundly, right to the bottom of my heart.

Henri Barbusse

And he continued to travesty the truth, and I was impotent - the truth, that profound thing whose voice was in my ears, whose shadow was in my eyes, and whose taste was in my mouth. Was I so utterly forsaken? Would no one speak the word I was in search of?

Henri Barbusse

Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's eyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of Death. To north and south and west ajar there are battles on every side. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of that vastness.

Henri Barbusse

She sighs for the thought she has. She would like to be silent, but she must speak. "We don't love each other any more," she says, embarrassed by the greatness of the things she utters; "but we did once, and I want to see our love again."

Henri Barbusse

When two overlords, jewel-set with glittering General Staffs, proclaim at the same time on either side of their throbbing mobilized frontiers, "We will save our country!" there is one immensity deceived and two victimized. There are two deceived immensities! There is nothing else. That these cries can be uttered together in the face of heaven, in the face of truth, proves at a stroke the monstrosity of the laws which rule us, and the madness of the gods.

Henri Barbusse

I keep remembering - I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me.

Henri Barbusse

It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.

Henri Barbusse

I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.

Henri Barbusse

Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth.

Henri Barbusse

It is not a woman I want - it is all women.

Henri Barbusse

We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.

Henri Barbusse

The woman from the depths of her rags, a waif, a martyr - smiled. She must have a divine heart to be so tired and yet smile.

Henri Barbusse

Truth is simple. They who say that truth is complicated deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them.

Henri Barbusse